Alternative Weekly Publications Turn To Pulp
March 26, 2013
Alternative weekly prints are (were?) the younger sibling of big name newspapers. They provided an alternative viewpoint on the news and appealed to the vast subcultures that thrive in developed countries. According to Jack Shafer’s blog on Reuters this is the start of, ”The Long, Slow Decline Of Alt-Weeklies.” Much like the bigger publications, the alt-weekly titles saw plummeting sales with the digital print boom. It used to be and for a little while longer, alt-weeklies were the prime source for personals, jobs, apartments, etc. and while the publishers wanted readers to think it was the alternative views that drove sales, really it was these classified ads. Another big hit to the industry was when the record companies pulled their advertising and the retail stores that used to carry the alt-weeklies disappeared.
They alt-weeklies used to an anti-boredom device, but:
“…even a human fossil must concede that the smartphone trumps the alt-weekly as a boredom killer. How does a wedge of newsprint compete with an affordable messaging device that ferries games, social media apps, calendars, news, feature films, scores, coupons and a library’s worth of music and reading material? Ask a young person his opinion and he’ll tell you that nothing says “geezer” like a newspaper, be it daily or alt-weekly.”
Alt-weeklies are a losing business. Does this parallel the decline of search and retrieval, commercial database publishing, and content management systems. The market just drifts away. Transition periods stink.
Whitney Grace, March 26, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
Cengage: Time to Disengage?
March 25, 2013
Thomson Reuters in “Cengage Learning Hires Restructuring Advisers” reported that a former Thomson property is arranging a modest infusion of cash. “Modest” in this context is about $430 million, which is nothing when compared to the cost of a modern text book. (“See Textbook Prices Are Inflating Even Faster Than Tuition Prices: New Boston University Classifieds for Students Makes Buying Textbooks More Affordable.”)
Cengage used to be Thomson Learning, a sprawling collection of publishing companies. Some of the firms had traditional textbooks; others had combinations of traditional textbooks and electronic versions. My recollection is that the technical infrastructure of the original Thomson Learning was quite diverse. “Diverse” publishing infrastructures in the same organization add significantly to the costs of doing business. “Diverse” is also a stuck brake on innovation because repurposing content is time consuming and labor intensive. Prior to spinning off Thomson Learning to Apax Partners and Omers Capital Partners, Thomson’s senior management were focusing their considerable talents on cost efficiencies. . I assume that the technical infrastructure issues have been resolved.
Debt can be a burden as this illustration from Shape Home Loans suggests?i Does debt enhance agility or is it a financial play disconnected from structural changes such as those described in my “Gadzooks, It’s MOOCs: The Fuss over Open Source Learning” article?
One item in the Thomson Reuters news release caught my attention:
…the company said it had borrowed $430 million, almost all of its remaining credit facility to ensure its businesses have the cash they need. Stamford, Connecticut-based Cengage has a $1.5 billion term loan that matures next year and a total of $5.3 billion of debt as of Dec. 31.
Several observations:
First, this type of cash crunch in publishing is likely to become more common. I wrote a story for Online Searcher about the impact of online learning. There is also a chorus of “if you are smart, you can skip college” echoing around Kentucky. What if the online learning and the “you don’t have to go to college” blend? Companies depending upon the traditional purchasing patterns in education may find that new revenues are not sufficient to keep up with old revenue losses.
Second, the spillover from a Cengage-type of problem will have cascading effects. Examples which come to mind are revenues flowing to such organizations like Ebsco Electronic Publishing, ProQuest, and Wolters Kluwer. These companies are in the education food chain. If Cengage flu becomes contagious, these firms will face some additional financial challenges.
Third, the authors who provide content to the textbook giants have to be paid. With the shift to online courses, some of these authors may take their “fame” and their content and go a new direction. It is now possible for some textbook superstar authors to try to become celebrities. If Google needs knowledge, the company just hires the superstar. Won’t the same approach become possible in the online learning space? Maybe an existing textbook company will corner this market? I am not sure traditional textbook companies have the agility necessary to pull off a slam dunk.
Fourth, the online services like Thomson Reuters’ WestLaw and Reed Elsevier’s LexisNexis may also feel the impact of a shift. On one hand, these systems could gain new content from disaffected textbook publishers and, therefore, more revenue pulling information. On the other hand, traditional online services have been caught flatfooted by the surge in online educational content and may be too late to ride the new revenue train.
Net net: Is it time for customers of Cengage to disengage? A larger question is, “Will the professional publishing and professional online services be able to adjust to yet another sapping of their life blood?” Changes are coming. Many of these shifts will not be gentle, kind, or slow I fear.
Stephen E Arnold, March 25,2013
Another Publisher Put Under the Scope
March 20, 2013
The publishing industry has taken a big hit over the last several years as self-publishing has become a more profitable and easily obtainable way to publish material. It is however, a double-edged sword.
Evidently “O’Reilly Media Has Lost Its Soul.”
“O’Reilly Media—the publishing wing at least—appears to have lost its soul. I have no doubt that Tim O’Reilly founded the company with a great vision and high respect for authors. I don’t know when things changed, but it’s obvious that they have. It’s hard to value anything that O’Reilly Media is doing today, including its conferences, when its publishing wing is this dysfunctional.”
A reputable publishing company doesn’t just publish your book, but their reputation as well. It is a perk you can’t get with self-publishing, but things can often go wrong and this is I feel an overly harsh criticism of a publishing company as a whole based upon one undesirable experience.
Anyone can self-publish these days (anyone can write a book of nonsense and throw it up on the internet), which is why reputable publishing companies are more important than ever.
Leslie Radcliff, March 20, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Indie Bookstore Fight Back against Amazon eBooks Monopoly
March 14, 2013
Amazon seems to be at the top of its game. From the latest electronics, clothing and even school supplies they seem to have their hand in everything and be doing very well. However, not everyone is a fan of the online giant. According to the Paid Content article “Indie Bookstore Sue Amazon, Nig-6 Publishers for Using DRM to Create Monopoly on eBooks” three independent bookstores are suing Amazon and the big-six partners based on their DRM (digital rights management). The three independent bookstores involved are Manhattan-based Posman Books, Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza and Fiction Addiction of Greenville, South Carolina.
“The indies, represented by Los Angeles antitrust firm Blecher & Collins, say publisher contracts calling for the use of this DRM, which like most forms of DRM prohibits readers from copying eBooks or reading them on non-authorized devices, restrain eBook sales and that Amazon “has unlawfully monopolized or attempted to monopolize the market for eBooks in the United States.”
According to market estimates Amazon currently is the dominant leader in the eBook market with over 60 percent of uses using Amazon’s Kindle e-readers. Other well-known companies such as Barnes and Noble and even the mighty Apple are involved in the e-book market but represent only a small amount and don’t add up to much competition. The big-six publishers have contracts with Amazon that allow Amazon’s DRM eBooks but do not have any contracts or deals set up with independent bookstores. The plaintiffs are seeking an injunction that prohibits Amazon and the big six from publishing or selling eBooks that are app specific DRMs and to allow independent brick and mortar bookstores to directly sell open source eBooks published by the big six. It’s easy to see that though the big six are mentioned that the plaintiffs are clearly taking the fight straight to the front door of Amazon. Looks like digital content is alive and the battle lines have been drawn.
April Holmes, March 14, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Bookstores Take on Amazon and Publishers Over Ebook DRMs
March 13, 2013
Oh, the joys of the free market. PaidContent announces, “Indie Bookstores Sue Amazon, Big-6 Publishers for Using DRM to Create Monopoly on Ebooks.” Three brick-and-mortar bookstores seek to represent similarly positioned stores with their class-action suit filed in New York’s Southern District Court. This is the same court that oversaw the Department of Justice‘s antitrust suit over ebook pricing.
These stores assert that deals between the big publishers and Amazon, combined with the Amazon-specific reader, the Kindle, form a closed loop designed to shut out the competition. Digital rights management (DRM)software is the mechanism the mammoth online bookseller uses to enforce this exclusivity. Writer Laura Hazard Owen explains:
“The filing takes issue with Amazon’s proprietary DRM, AZW: ‘Ebooks with the AZW DRM can only be read on a Kindle device or on another device enabled with a Kindle application. . . . The Kindle app works solely with ebooks sold by Amazon.’ While the case names only the big-six publishers as defendants, Amazon places its DRM on nearly all of its ebooks from all publishers.
“The filing says that big-six publishers, through their contracts with Amazon that allow for Amazon’s proprietary DRM on their ebooks, ‘unreasonably restrain trade and commerce in the market for ebooks in violation of the Sherman Act.'”
The filing acknowledges the Nook as a Kindle competitor, with 25 percent of the market to Kindle’s more than 60 percent, but notes that Barnes & Noble is not exactly in a strong financial position at the moment. The plaintiffs hope the court will issue an injunction prohibiting Amazon and the large publishers from selling ebooks with device- and app-specific DRMs. They also call for those six publishers to let independent stores directly sell their ebooks with “open-source DRM,” though what they mean by that term is unclear.
Cynthia Murrell, March 13, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Can LinkedIn Move into Ebsco and Thomson Territory?
March 12, 2013
You may find “LinkedIn to buy Pulse Newsreader for More than $50 Million” interesting. If true, stakeholders in some large professional publishing companies may want to reconsider their holdings.
I think that the commercial business information publishers won’t pay much attention to this deal. Companies like Ebsco, Thomson Reuters, and Wolters Kluwer are trying to sustain their revenues while achieving growth. Thomson Reuters has faced some growth challenges. The other companies which compete with this venerable firm are in the same pickle in my opinion.
The reason is that LinkedIn is built of professionals who want to get jobs and sell work. Now hunting for a job may seem a far cry from searching an Ebsco database or consulting a Wolters Kluwer health database. I don’t think the gap is too big at all.
According to the write up:
LinkedIn will buy the maker of the newsreader app Pulse, according to sources familiar with the negotiations. The price of the acquisition is in the tens of millions, they said — between $50 million and $100 million.
The amount paid for Pulse is pocket change for the giants of business information publishing. But LinkedIn owns Slideshare, a collection of business information. Add that content to the base of people who want to make sure each can find a job or sell a consulting job, and you have a 21st century content system which is going to be of increasing importance.
With a nifty distribution channel like Pulse, which is a next generation magazine/journal platform, LinkedIn is in a position to start encroaching on the territory of the Thomsons, the Ebscos, and the Wolters Kluwers of the world.
LinkedIn is integrated professional publishing. Its customers and advertisers pay for value. Contrast that business model to “we have to buy this stuff” which characterizes some of the big professional publishing outfits.
What can these giants do to protect their markets? Is LinkedIn for sale? My hunch is that LinkedIn will put fragile professional publishing companies under more pressure. Why didn’t one of these giants of business information jump on the LinkedIn type of opportunity?
Perhaps none of the executives at these firms is thinking about finding a job or becoming a consultant? If the firms do not hit their financial goals, many of the senior executives at the business information and professional publishing powerhouses will have an opportunity to learn the value of LinkedIn first hand.
Stephen E Arnold, March 11, 2013
Journal Authors Choose Open Access Lite
February 25, 2013
I suppose this is good news for the traditionalists. The weekly scientific journal Nature has found that “Researchers Opt to Limit Uses of Open-Access Publications.” The wheels are slowly creaking toward a consensus in academia that publicly-funded research should be freely available. However, recent data indicates that even authors who publish in open-access journals desire at least some control over the ways content is used.
Open-access advocates accuse such researchers of failing to understand how publishing licenses affect research papers, and that if they only knew, they would all opt for the least restrictive Creative Commons license, the CC-BY license. They also suggest that free papers should carry their licenses attached, making the re-use parameters crystal clear. I have to say that last part seems like common sense.
One open-access journal, Scientific Reports (which, by the way, is put out by the same publisher as Nature), maintains a licensing system with three levels of restriction: the CC-BY, the more restrictive CC-BY-NC-SA, and the even more limiting CC-BY-NC-ND. Records show that about 95 percent of their authors chose one of the latter two, with 68 percent picking the most locked-down option. (See here for descriptions of all the Creative Commons licenses.) Are these choices really the result of ignorance?
Ross Mounce of the Open Knowledge Foundation in Cambridge thinks offering researchers a menu of licenses leads to the reflexive choice of the most restrictive option. However, the issue might not be so simple. Journalist Richard Van Noorden writes:
“Many publishers are also arguing against CC-BY, concerned in part about the loss of income if others can resell open-access works. Indeed, the International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers, a global trade organization based in Oxford, UK, is working on an alternative open-access licence that does not allow commercial or derivative use in reprints, abstracts or adaptations, but explicitly allows text-mining and translations.
“The problem is that adding restrictions to the re-use of work — even with good intentions — can create complex legal issues, explains Martin Hall, vice-chancellor of the University of Salford in Manchester, UK, and a co-author of the ‘Finch report’, an influential study on open access commissioned by the UK government.”
Here’s a link [PDF] to that Finch report, in case you’re curious. Yes, like anything involving legal distinctions, the issue is easily complicated. However, it will benefit us all if publishers, researchers, and open-access advocates can see their way through this thorny thicket. Together.
Cynthia Murrell, February 25, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Google Told it Must Pay Media Groups Throughout Europe
February 22, 2013
Recently, Google made the noteworthy offer to pay French publishers a hefty sum. Before that, the search giant reluctantly agreed to do the same for publishers in Belgium. Now, as suspected, the rest of Europe calls for similar treatment, we learn from “Google Must Extend Payments Across Europe for Use of Content.” The Reuters article quotes Francisco Pinto Balsemao, head of the European Publishers Council:
“Search engines get more than 90 percent of revenues from online advertising and a substantial part of these come directly or indirectly from the free access to professional news or entertainment content produced by the media. The situation is very bad for media groups (in Europe). This use is carried out without the authorization from copyright holders or without any payment in return. So, all aggregators, like Google, should pay. Google’s openness to negotiate and talk looks like a good step that must now be followed in other (European) countries.”
Google will not like this idea, but it may not have much choice. The company agreed to pay 60 million euros into a special fund for French media companies, but maintains an important caveat: This money is not direct payment for linking to media sites. Instead, the fund is devoted to helping those companies develop their Web presences. We are afraid that such a distinction may not provide much of a shield against the threat of legal precedence, as Balsemao’s comments demonstrate.
Cynthia Murrell, February 22, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Professional Publishing: The Britannica Method
February 9, 2013
I listened to the Harvard Business Review “ideacast” with Jorge Cruz. You can find this 16 minute “living case study” on iTunes and at this link. Harvard types love euphemisms, so we have audio program morphed into ideacast. You will need to perform a number of mental transformations to interpret what it means to Encyclopaedia Britannica to have killed the print product. Interior decorators will have to find older editions for the dens of the nouveau riche. Libraries with the 11th edition will have another asset to make their Boards salivate with the profit potential of musty old volumes.
The point of Mr. Cruz’s comments is that the CD ROM was a big problem for print publishers like the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Broad Internet access is the next big thing. The “ideacast” omitted some detail. I assume that most “ideacast” listeners are too darned busy to hear a chipper interlocutor ask such questions as:
- What are the cost efficiency measures you have implemented and will be implementing?
- What changes in editorial processes have allowed your firm to produce accurate content without compromising quality?
- What is the technical infrastructure for your publishing operation?
- What are your plans for “pay to play” articles from scholars who need to toot horns now that peer reviewed publications are under attack?
- What are the new products and services you envision for 2013?
- What are your plans for acquisition of properties to accelerate growth?
- Where does your firm’s information fit in today’s content landscape?
Alas, these questions were not asked. What a happy coincidence that as I was listening to the ideacast, I read “The Elsevier Boycott One Year On.” The trigger for this write up was the birthday celebration for the Great Elsevier Boycott. Scholars have been grousing about having to pay to get their content into “real” journals. Once the money has been handed over, the Elsevier-type scholarly publications go slowly in the best tradition of the good old days of clubby publishing. I think of soft lighting in London clubs where careers are made and shattered amidst chuckles, cigars, and conversation.
The write up asserts:
In one respect the boycott has been an unqualified success: it has helped to raise awareness of the concerns we have about academic publishing. This, we believe, will make it easier for new publishing initiatives to succeed, and we strongly encourage further experimentation. We believe that commercial publishers could in principle play a valuable role in the future of mathematical publishing, but we would prefer to see publishers as “service providers”: that is, mathematicians would control journals, publishers would provide services that mathematicians deemed necessary, and prices would be kept competitive since mathematicians would have the option of obtaining these services elsewhere.
Elsevier and I assume other professional publishers have figured out that the Young Guns of academia are capable of pumping out tweets, blog posts, and talks at conferences suggesting that:
- Professional publishers charge a lot for scholars’ work which scholars’ had to pony up some dough to create
- Subscription prices are too high. Libraries cannot afford the gems of wisdom contained in a traditional scholarly journal.
- The time delays in traditional publishing, even when equipped with fancy technology from XML centric publishing systems, are unacceptable in today’s world. Hey, grant money may be available for a short time, and scholars want that citation in Twitter time, not hot metal type time.
The write up adds this point:
We acknowledge that there are differing opinions about what an ideal publishing system would be like. In particular, the issue of article processing charges is a divisive one: some mathematicians are strongly opposed to them, while others think that there is no realistic alternative. We do not take a collective position on this, but we would point out that the debate is by no means confined to mathematicians: it has been going on in the Open Access community for many years. We note also that the advantages and disadvantages of article processing charges depend very much on the policies that journals have towards fee waivers: we strongly believe that editorial decisions should be independent of an author’s access to appropriate funds, and that fee-waiver policies should be designed to ensure this. To summarize, we believe that the boycott has been a success and should be continued. Further success will take time and effort, but there are simple steps that we can all take: making our papers freely available, and supporting new and better publication models when they are set up.
My question, “Will Encyclopaedia Britannica’s new business model emerge as a beacon for professional publishing?” My hunch. Nah. The Harvard Business Review will, however, explain how management did the buggy whip thing. That old chestnut should be tossed in la poubelle. The hip scholars either look information up via Google or follow in the footsteps of Emilio Delgado Lopez Cozar et al.
Stephen E Arnold, February 9, 2013
Commercial Professional Publishers: Aced Again?
February 8, 2013
In June 2012, an insular commercial database and professional publishing operation paid me to show up and share the trends my team had identified in online information. We were deep in the open source search study, which will be available to registered attendees of the Lucene Revolution in May 2013. I showed up, ran down a list of five areas which looked like potential investment areas. The group said, “We have these on our list already. What the heck did we hire you for anyway?”
Flash forward eight months. The insular outfit is still insular. And one of the opportunities I highlighted just became much more expensive. Navigate to “LinkedIn Eyes Future as Professional Publishing Hub.” The story points out that LinkedIn is profitable and growing organically. Here’s the passage I noted:
LinkedIn plans to hook you with business content you can’t get elsewhere — whitepapers, news articles, educated discussion threads, and so forth. When you come back more often and stick around longer — LinkedIn likes to use the term “engagement” to describe your attention — the professional social network can get clients to list more jobs and spend more on ads.
Oh, oh. Content marketing. I think the approach is a variation on Augmentext type content.
Most professional publishing and database companies do not grow organically because after years of trying to move into new markets and channels, the outfits just raise fees to lawyers, accountants, librarians, and financial analysts. When that stops working, the companies buy stuff and try to make the investments work. Whether it is medical fraud or crazy online encyclopedias, the path to the good old days of commercial professional and database publishing are harder and harder to recapture.
LinkedIn, like a couple of other outfits, is now heading into professional publishing land. If one of the big guys like Thomson Reuters or Ebsco try to hop on the train, the price of ticket has gone up a lot.
I don’t like to say, “I told you so.” I am more inclined to point to Williams James’ comment about “a certain blindness.” If you don’t see it, you cannot react. This is not Google or Facebook “arrogance” on the part of these traditional publishing companies’ management. The inability to spot an hot opportunity, overcome the friction of the “way it was,” and then act in a purposeful manner is the core problem in this business sector. Mark Logic can run conferences that cheerlead slice and dice as a strategy for growth. Outsell-type consultants can spin reports about innovations in publishing. The failed Web masters and unemployed journalists who bill themselves as mavens and poobahs can explain what’s happening in content created by and for professionals.
The problem is that making money means getting in before the CNet’s of the world report the obvious. So, no I told you so. Just a certain blindness. One can get run over crossing the street when blind. Stakeholders, are you listening? Some of the management in the companies in which you have invested may not be able to see the opportunities on the information superhighway.
Stephen E Arnold
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